Mariners run wild, complete wild run with 9-3 win over Anaheim

J.P.’s story

Record scratch. Freeze frame. You’re probably wondering how I got into this situation.

It all started when the Seattle Mariners hired Eric Young, Jr. to be their first base coach, and so began the craziest summer of my life.

As soon as EY came to Seattle, me and the boys started running wild. But it wasn’t that the fastest guys were suddenly taking off at every good opportunity. They already do that. It was more that even those of us aren’t the fleetest of foot suddenly had the intel and the confidence to try.

Take the second inning of today’s game. Emerson Hancock was looking good, locating his pitches well, pounding the edges of the zone, and picking up a ton of weak contact. But he’d still let the Angels string together a few singles at 77, 81, and 85 mph for one run, and then in the next inning gave up a dinger to Jorge Soler in that weird little box down the left field line where I swear I’ve only ever seen opposing hitters home. The Mariners really ought to move that wall in and raise the line there.

But EY wasn’t going to let Hancock pitch from behind, helping Mitch Garver of all people steal second base after he’d worked a walk. Garver’s in the slowest 11% of the league and he’s never stolen more than one base in a season. But here we were at the end of April and, despite drastically reduced playing time, Garver already had his second bag of the year. Leo Rivas eventually drove him home to tie the game at 2-2 (the first run courtesy of Randy Arozarena giving the first pitch of the inning a 400-foot ride into the upper deck).

Just an inning later, when Cal Raleigh reached on an error, EY told him about Tyler Anderson’s move to the plate. So after Cal got to second on a passed ball, Cal timed up the move and took off for third base, getting there easily and scoring when the ball bounced off his helmet. That steal of third is already Cal’s fourth bag of the year. He’d started running a bit more last year, but nothing like since EY took over. He’s on pace for just the third 20-steal season by a catcher in the past quarter century.

Even Donovan Solano, a walking Blockbuster Video, drew a throw today after EY whispered in his ear.

Hancock gave that run back, but ended his outing with just three runs allowed over six innings, his second quality start in a row. Hancock’s line won’t jump off the page, but of the 22 balls that Angels hitters put into play, only four were hit hard, and of the 18 others, eleven were slower than 80 mph. After the game, I heard him say about all the weak contact, “I thought we made some really good pitches. I thought we executed pretty well. I mean you can always be better, but you can’t control broken bats and where the ball goes from there.” He’s so right about that. It’s the flip side of the disaster of his first outing when every ball in play found a hole. I also heard he got something called the Sun Hat Award, but I didn’t ask any follow up questions.

We wanted that outing from Emerson to be good enough, so we had to keep running. In the seventh, Leo Rivas beat out an infield hit and Samad Taylor laid down a perfect bunt to put two runners on for me. I did that thing I do where I slap the ball the other way, and they both scored. Turns out getting the score to 5-3 would’ve been enough since the Angels never scored again. But you can never scored too many runs.

So there I was on first base with Julio at the plate. Julio hit a ball deep but center fielder Kyren Paris looked to have a bead on it. My instinct was to go anyway and EY was yelling at me to really throw the gas on. It was a risk because if Paris had caught the ball, I would’ve gotten doubled up at first. But the ball hit the wall, and I had to motor all the way home from first base to score the sixth run. Man, I was beat.

Julio had been talking to EY too, and so he knew what to expect from Reid Detmers, who—because the Angels are the Angels—had become a reliever, and Julio took off for third base. Thank goodness he did because he ended up diving right underneath the line drive that Cal hit. Our old first base coach, Kristopher Negron told Julio to get back up and rumble into home.

After that, the boys played add-on for another couple runs against someone called Ryan Johnson. But the game was functionally over thanks to Eric. After the game, I got the on-field interview and simply put it like this: “Boys are hot.” The win cemented our seventh series win in a row and sent us on a road trip to play more division rivals, which I was looking forward to because we were 9-3 against the AL West in April.